Half Full
by rednightmare
Summary: There is a little more wine yet in the widow's goblet; there is a little more she has to say. Join the eerie Edwina Moira and a certain master thief as they sit down for a madwoman's toast on the tower sill.


_**Author's Note: **_**First piece of 2012!**

**The ambiance of **_**Deadly Shadows**_**, on the whole, felt lacking compared to its predecessors… but I thought this mission was genius in how perfectly it captured the essence of **_**Thief**_**. Here's a short little extension of and tribute to it. Garrett x Viki if you turn your head like so; Garrett _vs._ Viktoria if you tilt it the other way. Pick your poison. Either translates.**

_**Forewarning**_**: If you haven't played the entire **_**Thief**_** series and you wind up at the end of this piece like "WHAT THA FEK JUST HAPPENED"... well, that's probably normal.**

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><p><strong>Half Full<strong>

_Drink to me only with thine eyes,  
>And I will pledge with mine;<br>Or leave a kiss but in the cup,  
>And I'll not look for wine. <em>

_- Ben Jonson_

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><p>There is a chill in the Widow Moira's house tonight.<p>

It blows in across the cold City sea, furls over whitecaps and Watch buoys, sinks into marrow. It beaches upon metal warehouses, chapel belfries, the bronze relic of Angelwatch, Warden outposts, gallery quoins and Auldale estates richer than this one. It drenches cheap apartment floors, collapses unpaneled basements and swells canal banks. It hurls itself wailing into tempered rock like a maid off a cliffside. And it breaks like her bones washed upon the shore.

When Edwina Moira turns in the dark of a brick tower belvedere and looks at him – through him, _into_ him; her eyes more pearl white than pallor blue – a chill colder than any ocean draft rips up Garrett's spine.

He has not moved. He has made no sound. No hard soles creaking floorboards; no cape flutter; no errant sneeze or iron grates to scuff. The wires of Garrett's body are too disciplined for stray movements that might reveal his edges. There was only a rattle on the windowpane, a buckle of thunder, light that shattered over turbulent waves far below. _Luck_, he tells himself with frozen back and locked hips. Insists it: _luck only_. She is a vocationless noble woman. She cannot know he is here. She could not have heard the sudden half-breath that pealing _krak!_ stole from his lungs.

Moira stands slack and speechless where she paused; the widow's sight pierces directly into one murky, one mechanized eye.

The thief closes both – squeezes them shut. No reflection; no gloss of light to trace the sharp angles of his wind-raw, vulpine face. He stands motionless in these pitch shadows of an empty armoire alcove. Palms covered in soot press against the icy blocks, over the mortar hardened between them. Cobwebs of a hundred-year-old undercroft stick to pant knees and raw elbows. Cinders have smudged his features black: bony cheeks, broad mouth, fine chin, knife-cut nose. Blood ekes beneath two fingernails bitten by a rooftop trapdoor. Back teeth grit. He hardly dares to inhale.

"Ginny?" Moira asks into the darkness.

It is violence outside. Gales keen upon the manor walls, break outdoor lanterns. Banners bleeding ink ripple on their posts. Harbor planks groan beneath the brunt of salt, dead marlin, seaweed – a current that stretches back to primeval eras, distances engulfed by fog. Monsters with no names lurk in gloomy water. There is the scent of brine and dust; closer, there is candlewax, woodruff perfume and uneaten cheddar on rye toast; there is old, old stone.

"Ginny," she asks again. Her voice is chimes on the storm wind; her pupils are echoing, haunting, two flooded coalmines under moonlight. They see more than they should. She stares blankly, but Garrett knows they see him.

Then silence.

And then, whispered, dreadful hope: "_Robert_…?"

Garrett is still. He thinks his heart has stopped. Or he would, had it not deafened all else; the dearest muscle beats into the back of his sternum. It is a tinny metronome: _ka-thunk. ka-thunk. ka-_

She gazes for a moment longer, raptness loitering, before something like reality returns.

"Would you come into the light?" the woman asks – it is a question that bangs shrapnel deep into the cavity beneath his chest. _Run_, adrenaline blares. _Run; run, Garrett; drop everything and run_. It is like a Mechanist alarm resounding in his skull: the need to move, flee, escape with life and limb intact. But there is nowhere _to_ run, squeezed both shoulders tight against a dip in this frigid outlook peak. He has no flash bombs, no gas canisters, no cotton sheaves dipped into ether. A small burlap sack full of snagged jewelry, pillowcased statuettes, and tightly-rolled silverware is pressed into the corner behind him. He is trapped. He is red-handed.

Yet the manse's lady does not screech for help or demand explanations in that haughty, scandalized tone of intimidated nobility Garrett has come to know so well. She tilts her head, confused, and says – effortless as any teatime pleasantry: "Dear. I apologize. I'm afraid my wick has burnt down, and I… I can barely make you out."

Edwina Moira is a small woman. Garrett is not a particularly large man – o contraire, he is quite decidedly a weed – but in contrast with this partridge-boned widow, may as well be one of Ramirez's toughboys. Fragile structure, petite hands, weak ankles. Her bearing is meek and frail – she shivers much more than a woman of her age ought. Her hair is unkempt, mousey; poorly-combed, grieving tufts of it waft about, adding ten extra years upon thirty. Fingers – feeble, spindly, wan – worry the mauve lace along her sleeping gown; moon glow makes insignificant movements into something vaguely Pagan. Rings encircle the ghostlike eyes. Stockinged feet wear no shoes. There is nothing intimidating about her, a snapshot of the madness that precedes a crumbling mind. Yet when Moira paces forward – three measured, confident steps – his stomach plunges. The one-eyed criminal's windpipes snap-freeze. Panic cramps his calves, hamstrings, that taut little tether hinging bottom jaw to top. He has never been so poignantly aware of being alone in his life.

An arm, feeble and tentative, lifts – _reaches_. The fear that she might touch him is suddenly greater than being found. So – hackles bristling on their ends, feeling surreal – Garrett steps from the safety of obscurity with blank face and bothered soul.

They look full at each other, widow and thief.

A skiff clinks its moorings in the boathouse.

Someone drops silver plates in a kitchen sink far below.

Robert Moira's tempest rumbles in the great smog far beyond this hoary window glass.

"Oh," Edwina murmurs, brows worried. But her lax exclamation is not an "oh!" of horror or dismay. The scarf she wears has come untied; cashmere sags, and shows the blue of her throat. There it dangles, sterling and plain: the viktrola cabinet key he had scaled this tower to claim. "I'm sorry. You must forgive me, but this mist is so terribly thick, and it makes things hard to see. I hate to give such... such shoddy hospitality, but I've been so very preoccupied, you know. It's been just terribly busy in the house of late. But that's no excuse. That's really no excuse."

Is this happening? Is this meeting real? Garrett might pinch himself to be sure he is not caught inside a nightmare – for this man has had many, most wilder than this – but his hands do not seem to work. The cinders blotted upon brow, bridge and mouth corners are an awkward camouflage. They flash in another lightning burst at the stranger's back. Moira's milky eyes squint.

"It's… is that…Damen, isn't it? Gentle Damen? Our gentle Boatswain Damen?" she tries, hoping. Perhaps it works because this is who Edwina desperately wants to see.

"That's right," Garrett hears himself say, a rasp in his throat. He clears it badly. This is the most a shaken thief can muster with his victim's tiny hand closing around a leathered forearm, towing forward, her digits bitter cold.

Then the woman is leading him to her single wooden table, almost fussing, lost in something she has forgotten to do. He does not protest. He behaves as she steers him. What else is there to do? This uninvited guest cooperates, because the alternative is murder or capture – both are unthinkables, forbidden into a sealed corridor of his mind.

Used tea trays are pushed clumsily aside. She sweeps two fresh candlesticks from the nearby cupboard and thumps them down as a centerpiece; they are a beautiful gold, but he cannot appreciate wealth right now. His clever fingers are too numb to itch for want. He can see his breath in this unadorned crow's nest; he can see hers, too.

"Damen, how nice of you to come call upon me. Robert must have sent you here ahead of him – to let me know he's nearing home. You've travelled such a long way. And in this weather! Let me take your coat for you," Moira is ushering, and Garrett is sickened to lose his outer cloak, but must. He shrugs it loose when she pulls the train, letting it fall into grasping hands laden with gaudy, oversized rings. The bow is carried away and propped upon his hauling bag. The listless black garment she drapes over her large plush sitting chair; this is the tidiest his clothes have been folded in a while, but the fact goes unnoticed against a thousand other spooks: noise downstairs, maid voices, moaning architecture, fitful seas. Lockpicks twinkle at the thief's belt. They are a fine pair with the stiletto dagger strapped upon his boot neck. "Our servants should have already seen to… but here. Sit, please," Edwina says. The offered furniture is wooden and squeaky. She moves for a lighter, strikes both candles – they radiate in the cool, still, mildewed air.

Hood fallen, head free – ears, attuned to every scuffle underfoot; mane, jagged and silt-brown; neck, lengthy and not very thick. His face is open to color and air currents and sight and sounds; his pulse is beating just below his Adam's apple, a dull and stressful throb. Garrett glances up. The chandelier has blown out and it is swinging idly, catching shadows of raindrops down its curves. Someone is tinkering with a piano many steps below.

He has to get out of here, he has to _get out_; madness will melt you like a flake on the churchyard iron, a rhinestone erupting against cobblestone, an old torch in February sleet…

"What happened to your eye?" the widow gasps. She leans across their crowded tabletop. Her thumb – a cold, cold thumb – presses into the coarse, ugly scar beneath his right socket; her fingers tickle his jawbone.

"I lost it," Garrett chokes – because he has no other reply.

Edwina's brow furrows; slender lips pout in motherly concern. When her hand falls away, it is a blunt, incredible relief. The thief tenses. He tightens his fists upon the splintery birch and stares hard at them. Her handprint sticks there – a clean star upon one grimy cheek. "Oh. What a pity. I am so sorry to hear that, dear Damen. Was it pirates? Robert always warned you about shipping foreign wines so late into the season…"

Wind clatters the windowsill, teasing of hail. Mistress Moira gazes distantly beyond Garrett, and pines.

"Damen. Sweet, thoughtful Damen. Now that I've said so, I must ask. Would you," she wonders, tapping fingers to her anemic lips, "be good enough to poke in the kitchen, perhaps, and fetch me a bottle of wine? Any year or color will do. I'm not finicky – not about wines. It's just that my servants have…" The hesitance tells of sanity – female shrewdness – glinting behind this miasma that has watered her eyes. "Forgotten."

And Garrett does it – Builder, wild spirits, _whoever_ help him – he does it, because there is no simple walking away. She has his cowl and his take, the cutlery and decoration and jewels stuffed into cheap burlap. But addled gentry women can be overpowered easily enough. The truth is that she clutched far more than equipment; something in those far-flung, misty eyes saw into death – hers? His own? Who knows? – and sent an odd bolt of dread directly through the master thief's core. It reminded him of Keeper interpreters… those weak, grey-haired scholars withered far before their time. They looked at text, darkness, prophecy (you) and read _more_ than there was. Perhaps it was the foresight of those who straddled the end of their lives.

Garrett has witnessed more than his fair share of horrors beyond the grave, yet he would not presume to philosophize. That was the Order's job. All this man knew, tiptoeing down then up these winding stairs – descending all the way into a cellar, then slinking open-faced back to the tower-top – was that a key dangled around Edwina Moira's neck. A key he needed. It was not kosher to slice women's jugulars for a lock; murder and hostages were marks of amateurs. This was an easier route. Put her to sleep on white wormwood or apple wine, and perhaps he could slice that rope right from the widow's collar.

So here Garrett is – returning with bottle in one hand, two pewter goblets in the other. These were the closest he'd found among twelve well-stocked racks in a dimly-lit pantry. He says nothing. He uncorks the vintage – something like dry clove wafts up – and sets everything down. No scrapes on Moira's circle table; no footsteps following him upstairs. The thief feels a frog is wedged inside his throat. He is afraid to utter stray words that might break this spell.

Edwina shows no signs of sudden clarity, however. She is sitting at her place, worrying the long chiffon sleeves that devour both hands. She smiles at him. Both pallid cheeks are creased by weeping lines never washed away. "Oh, bless you. You are kind to wait upon me so," the late captain's widow thanks him. She reaches for the chardonnay immediately. It pours faster than Moira expected, and droplets swirl around the cup, splashing over. "I'm a miserable hostess for sending you on a chore. I've just had so little strength lately. One must feel sympathy for the guardsmen… standing watch in high places does drain the heat from you. But they take good care of me. My loyal, steadfast Curtis. I suspect he frets about me drinking here – that I might slip. But I don't swoon so easily. He's a noble man. Do sit and toast with me, Damen," she bids; a tiny, shoeless foot taps forward and pushes out the spare chair again. "We should wish Robert a smooth voyage. And pray those pirates are a bother to no one any longer. Or – I'm sorry – did you say it was brigands that took your eye?"

_Brigands_. Schemers, tricksters, clever knaves. A perverse chateau lorded by one potbellied man in moth-eaten robes; a felt hood that hid his puppet's raven hair, soft eyes, wide and scarlet lips. Drink that smelled of absinthe and honeysuckle; blouse necks loosed deliberately too low. Corridors that led nowhere, floors tilted into ceilings, a mad twist of a house. Sinister gold. Wicked praises. Poisoned promises made by the voice too clear to be wholly woman. _"You've done well, Garrett."_

How it all fell to vines and bark; cloven feet; too many teeth; red, red eyes and the resonant voice ripped his soul to lead: _BOW TO THE WOODSIE LORD AND OFFER UP YOUR FLESH EYE SO THAT HIS EYE OF STONE MAY SEE-_

"It _was_ brigands, actually." Garrett blinks – one eye coffee, one venin green – takes the full goblet she offers, and folds both hands around it.

"Horrible. Our poor Damen. I hope someone killed them," Edwina whispers – a delicate, curdling, sweetly vicious aside. There is a pause between them whilst Moira fumbles for her own cup. It trembles as the widow's lips find wine; one rattling wrist sets her glass back to the rumpled cream tablecloth. She swallows, dabs with a ladies' kerchief, then smiles. It is an expression of contentment, respite and gratitude. There is no fear or disgust towards his false eyeball. "But I'm glad to see everything turned out all right in the end."

So many sounds – forge gears bursting, treads running askew, boilers gobbling charcoal. Steam that could melt skin from bone. Clinking, roaring, leaking Mechanist constructs with copper faces smashed into iron floors. And then _ruptured wood_. His own scream that got stuck somewhere and never quite came. Bark in the air, strange spores, making all the metal-oil-ore of that place smell like rainwater and blood and butterfly weed. Like her. "Yes, I suppose it did."

Edwina nods, lays her handkerchief neatly across one knee, and cloudy eyes flash at him conspiratorially. "I've got brigands in my house, I do," the woman mutters. Garrett feels his pulse thump faster. She attempts to smooth a stringy hair knot flat. "These _houseguests_. Can't turn my back on a one of them. These esquires and seigneurs and vidames. And all their silly little wives. They think I don't hear them skulking about – but I do. When my Robert returns…" A grave, condemning murmur that trails off. "Do you know the only difference between a brigand and a baronet, dear friend?"

"Pantaloons?" Garrett tries; it's a snide remark that escapes him before the thief can censor it. The surrealism is starting to wear. Moira titters into her napkin. He takes a drink of his own wine.

"I think the joke goes 'better manners,' but I like yours. We have precisely the same point. Robert always says birthrights and bank savings matter little in the true matter of a man. _'Knights or jackknives,'_ – that's how he'd tell me – _'to know a person – to genuinely read their intentions – you must look them in the eye'._" She stares at his directly. A thunderclap snaps light against her study key. He prays she will grow drowsy soon. "Don't you think that's so, Damen?"

"Suppose I should have looked my brigands in the eye." The thief takes another quaff, only half disturbed. Would it have done him any good? Beneath that filmy guise of humanness, the Trickster preferred vision made of rock, sacrifice, old magicks. And hers were solid ruby, anyway.

But they still cried, at least. Or perhaps they had once, claws dripping crimson as they shrank, defenseless Pagan huts burning through the cedar trees. She'd fallen onto the skewered corpses of a white-haired priestess carrying someone's small child – still pinned together by a Mechanist bolt – and clutched at that old crone's arms till they all bled: elder, babe, garden-keeper whose seedlings had been squashed. A nymph weeping was less like sorrow and more so something terrifying – jackal howls, whirlwinds, screech owls – not a woman's grief. But Viktoria was not a woman. Her tears were sticky, yellowish, like nectar; her pain was made more of hate than woe.

"Don't blame yourself, Damen. You never can with things like this. It's what I'm always telling the servants when they break something," Mistress Moira comments, sniffing – not from pretention, but because this ghastly tower makes her sinuses run. She tucks it into her rag. He thinks about springing across their countertop and pinning the cloth there until she faints – hand to mouth, nostrils pinched shut – but doesn't. _Compendium of Reproach_, every cell of Keeper still within him hisses. Scouring out hidden rooms is a familiar routine by now, and he's already lined up all the breadcrumbs in this mansion. Lock, key, latch-door, a dead spouse's parting secrets left in his own voice. They paint an obvious picture: Garrett is here for a purpose. A real purpose – beyond wealth or greed or the petty settling of scores. At this point, though, he is no longer sure which places that purpose at greater risk: moving forward or sitting still. "And what my own mother used to say. There's no use crying over spilt milk, and all that."

Advice from a madcap widow – excellent irony. The nervous prowler is not in a position to appreciate it, but his lips twist under a bitter smirk. Lightning in the window sill; wine in his cup; grime from a dozen crawlspaces all across long, aching hands. "You really figure it's that easy?"

"Of course it is, gentle Damen. I say so almost every day. Pick up what you can, and what you can't, you can live without."

Garrett does not recall the sealing combination on Soulforge's great gold chapel doors; he does remember shutting them, windless, and unfolding his fist to a crumpled handful of leaves.

Edwina blows her nose. "Fie! Madam Mastiff thinks I'll catch my death up here. Maybe she's right! Pass me the bottle again, will you, dear?" The thief did.

"Your husband – Robert – left a message for you. On the downstairs viktrola. If you like, and if you have the key, I could bring it here," he attempts. This plan does not progress very far before the widow, hand fluttering dismissively, slams shut it.

"No, no. I hate that infernal contraption," Moira announces with wrinkled nose. "You probably think I'm horribly old-fashioned, but I can't bear the ugly thing. It's faulty, and it makes such a _noise_. Like branches on a tin pan. All those foolish Mechanist toys do."

And Garrett smiled, because despite the failed deception, he couldn't agree more.

"Thank you for offering, however. I shouldn't worry so. Robert will straighten things the moment he arrives. He'll give these counterfeit friends a turnabout." She reaches, takes up the glass neck, and pours two inches of dry chardonnay into both their glasses. Liquor plinks into Garrett's already full goblet. He doesn't comment or refuse. "But in the meantime, this howling old house does get fearfully lonely. There is hardly anyone left to really trust – barring my maids, that is, and Cook. And Captain Curtis. You've met Curtis, haven't you?" The man quickly dipped his head 'yes,' lest she summon her bodyguards for a full introduction. (_Curtis_ may or may not have been that stubbled, sleepless watchman he'd blackjacked into a puddle of his own spit down by the dining chamber.) Edwina sighed after a large gulp of wine. "Such a good man. You know that's the complete truth if Robert trusts him with my safety when he's away. My Robert would never let anyone hurt me; there's no better judge of character. But he's so very busy. Not many people have time to waste talking to a fretful sailor-wife. You can't let it hurt your feelings, though – not when they mean well. You've got no better friends than your guardians, Damen. Remember that."

"I will," Garrett reassures; he can't help but wonder what Artemus might say. It's disturbing how often he asks himself this as age chisels them both. Mentor and student – a sad set of links in a very strong chain.

"Still, it would be nice to have more friends come for tea. Or cakes. Or wine!" The drink has begun to take effect, he thinks – it twirls in sweeps of Mistress Moira's arm, sloshing of goblets, the easiness of her smiles. Alcohol reduces the quaking brought about by chilly blood. There is discord in that high, brittle voice. She harrumphs. "No one has any integrity anymore. Those crooks downstairs, for instance… they don't appreciate anything but coin. They don't know the _value_ of things. Do you know what I mean, Damen?"

"I know exactly what you mean," says the master thief who hides a closet full of treasures – dozens of tokens, pretty ornaments, sentimental conquest trophies – he could not sell.

"Do you?"

"I do."

Garrett doesn't know why this swathe of memories clusters: a handful of letters, read once, locked away; one jasper stone struck from the hilt of Constantine's sword, saved; three tattered leaves carried mindlessly from Karras's citadel and pressed into a book he knew he'd never open again. He did not want them. Unlike arrogant prizes stolen from throne rooms, Warden vaults or ostentatious art displays, he did not want to be reminded of these things. But he kept them. _Keeps_ them, you could say. Why? He doesn't know.

Or maybe he does, and this is why they must stay close – piece of past – a warning of what's been lost, what is left to lose.

"You can't buy back time with coin," he mutters, barely shared, a private aside.

Her grin is invigorated and sloppy. "Right! How very _right_ you are, Damen. A stack of silvers just isn't the same as a hand statue or your mother's mirror or heirloom broche, even if they're identical in cost." (Curios that clamor in his loot bag right now. Best not to dwell on this fact.) "Some things simply can't be compensated. Replaced. Some things are priceless."

"And some things are worth more than their actual price."

"Yes. Yes a hundred times! It's the _context_ of an item," she says. "It's the history behind it. When they're unique. It makes them singular, you know; it gives them meaning. It makes a thing really special."

"One-of-a-kind," Garrett echoed.

The Widow Moira beheld him fondly. "Do you know what I think? I think we two are just cut from the same cloth." And she dealt them both another dose of vintage.

What the hell? He drank what was in his cup.

"I do so welcome you dropping in to see me," Edwina mused, flooding her glass again. "Have I said that? Because I mean it absolutely. There's no one here to whom people like us can really relate. And no one I can talk to. Not even Ginny. Such a sweet girl, my Ginny, but she doesn't understand me." Red-headed little Ginny, a twiggy lass in green, was currently bundled unconscious in a coat closet near the private library. Unlucky girl. Or a very lucky one, depending on your perspective. Roughly one hour ago, she'd gone fleeing tearfully from her head housekeeper, across the storm-lit rotunda, through a dark foyer… and right into Garrett.

This humble picklock's exploits must've pleased some ancient demigod of villainy, because – though karma occasionally sent him serving girls – they were always the mute and stuttering kind. He'd silenced an oncoming shriek with one closed fist in the solar plexus. Whatever oxygen had been left in that whimpering maid was knocked through her open mouth without a sound. Ginny doubled-over, easy as a folding easel, gesturing wildly for air she couldn't draw. The thief caught her collar before those panicked hands slammed noisily into floorboards or hanging pictures. From here it was a simple formula: one brusque pull forward over his left arm, the right locked around her neck. One palm full of cape over nose and mouth before she found her breath. One short sitting of thirty-to-sixty seconds, enduring nails and flailing elbows, waiting for willpower to die, tutting a litany of short "shh, shh ,shh"es until her eyes rolled back in her head and she hung limp as a dead eel.

(It was somewhere in his late-twenties Garrett had the humbling realization he'd smothered more girls than he'd kissed. A good deal more. An embarrassingly good deal.)

"I'm afraid I may have gotten poor Ginny in trouble again, asking her to fetch me a sip," Moira was rambling – tipsy in earnest, now – chin-in-hand. Unpainted lashes have grown weighty. She teeters a bit in the seat. "Madam Mastiff must think she's drinking it all herself. What a notion! I'm glad no one bothered you, Damen. And I hope you don't take me for a common wine sop. Sometimes one just needs a bit of help to relax. I've been at my vigil for eight nights now, you know. I'm sick to death of hot cocoa. And it's all anyone will bring me! It isn't too much to ask, do you think? A little sleep?"

Her teeth clack. Their breaths condense. It occurs to Garrett the widow may indeed have come up here to die.

"Just a nap, you know. To keep my vigor. Sometimes I think I'm sleeping, but then it always turns out to be nothing more than a daydream." Edwina sighs with exaggerated wistfulness. "I do enjoy a nice, oaky chardonnay, I'd drink just about anything right now. Even mead. I despise mead; it trickles my teeth. But I miss my dreams. They're good company. Do you dream often, Damen?"

Not dreams, but nightmares – horrors that overflow from the eyes to imprint their lids. Horn, hoof, chain, shoulders rotting through the holy red vestment. Rust, cogs, glyphs undulating on limestone. Switches. Steam. Grooves of a pillar against his spine. Cage bars, mineshafts, whistles, willows, spiders, strange lights specking forest air. Mostly too many teeth in those red, red lips.

Bloody words – unforgiving, accusatory, meant to strike terror _SO THAT HIS EYE OF STONE MAY SEE._

"More than I'd like," the thief ruffs, and refills both their glasses himself.

So many times has he thought about throwing that damn book in the fire, prophecy crumbling on parchment, listening for leaflets to pop. It has been years, and Garrett still sees vines in his slumber. All sorts of vines – thorny, punitive, withering, burning. He will wake up halfway through a shout, clammy, skinning knife in his hand or beneath his headboard. He will paw at his cheek in the quilt, dazed, and swear for a horrible second it is not night sweat but _blood_. There is never peace or sadness or ambiguity in sleep. It is always rage, a scream, a crack in the earth. It always fills him with icewater that pounds his heart.

But it is not always the same dream.

Sometimes it is not an eye she snarls for, white flesh to fill some weak god's void, but answers to a question he does not know. _WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY-_

And he will jolt awake to find himself standing – back flat against a wall, perspiration on his face, fingers flat upon beams of tempered wood and eye plastered wide in the dark.

Why what, witch?

These are the worst nights of all.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" the widow asks him, considering her reflection in a pool of pale wine.

Garrett smiles. "Less and less, Missus Moira. Less and less."

She smiles back – whether from relief or knowingness, he cannot tell. Her eyes close in a long, weary blink.

"Do you think you can sleep now?" It's a suggestion more than an honest inquiry. Hard rain patters shingles overhead; shards of it threaten to frost, thickening their window, throwing insect webs of shadow across the thief's slanted nose. They tangle on her face, too – denial caught in vague suspension. It looks as though this modest room is underwater.

"Perhaps I'll try," Edwina mulls aloud. It's a consideration made in the half-light of her unraveled wits.

"I think that's a good idea."

"The housekeepers say I'm moonstruck, did you know? That I've lost my mind." A finger – still benumbed, but much steadier now – rings around the goblet. "But I haven't. They just can't see like I can. I am _saner_ than those mice downstairs are – riffling about, eyeing all the pretty things in my house, divvying them up while I'm still breathing. And pretending to be my friends! That I can't abide. They're not honest at what they do. That's what riles me more than anything else. I so very far from mad. You believe me, don't you?"

Oh, the widow isn't wholly there – that much is obvious from the way she lilts and calls him Damen – but Garrett has _seen_ madness, how it gobbles you up, makes gold into flesh, paves grass with carmine dust. He is not sure how to describe what hums behind Edwina Moira's glassy stare. He is sure madness isn't it. "I do."

"I thought you might," she mumbles, a confession that is somehow sad.

The hail begins to wane on the tower roof.

"There are things you can touch, and things you just know," the woman continues, gaze crystalline. He begins to feel fuzzy; she slurs. There is only a fifth left in the bottle. "You can't touch a sense, a feeling. But that doesn't mean it isn't there. My Robert will always return to me. I know that. Most people don't want to – or can't – admit it, but we all know when someone is looking over us."

An hour ago – no more – this frostbitten mourner had turned straight to Garrett in the lingering dark.

"How?" the thief wonders before thinking better of it.

She bristles happily. "Why, you just do!"

Recurrent nightmares. Forms that dance or menace in the darkness. Wind kicks that bear odd scents and prickle with old but unforgotten danger. An inexplicable bad taste in his mouth – sometimes zinc, sometimes woundwort. Unfounded pity: Dyan's soldiers left alive; bare hands scooping rich earth to make way for a stolen sapling tree; one arrow shaft zipped thoughtlessly through a Hammerite's gullet, weird reflex action, before that priest spotted Pagan scouts filching quartz from a Dayport warehouse. Twitches of fraternity felt for simple, straightforward people with messy dialects who hold no love for him. Leaking wells that sound like drums. Bows that split and strangle and shrieks that demand WHY.

Moira claims _you just know_. Maybe he does.

Five wintry fingers clamp upon his own, stiffly and suddenly enough to _slap!_ – it makes Garrett jump inside his skin.

"We forgot to toast!" Edwina cries, lunging for the wine. What little is left glugs messily into their glasses.

He stops the nozzle with his palm when there is nothing left. "What are we toasting?" the man wonders – authentic curiosity – as she sets the empty vessel down.

"I don't know, but we positively must think of something. It's rotten luck not to toast. Do you have any ideas, my friend?"

A moment of stillness, of remembering. The thief's grin breaks open. He lifts his cup – much less full than hers – and dangles it between them. "To real wealth, and the few mad minds who understand it."

"Yes, real wealth! To those we watch for, and those whom watch for us."

They clink, and all the fine chardonnay spills over their hands. Moira likes this cheer so much, she clinks again.

Then there is silence in the overlook. Bay clouds booms again. The widow's head droops upon her neck.

"I hope Robert comes home soon."

"I'm sure he will," Garrett says, lump in his throat.

"You're right." She beams. Reality tangles with a world she's chosen. "But I am quite tired now, and I really must spot for my poor husband. I very much enjoyed drinking with you," Edwina adds, and when the lady stands up, nearly missteps on a corner of threadbare rug. She stumbles about aimlessly for a few minutes, vision woolly. The man Moira thought was Damen guides his would-be host to her armchair, where she quickly begins handing back cloak, hood and trappings. He puts them on and is glad for the cover of black fabric. While he adjusts cowl fastenings, the manor mistress pushes Garrett's elbow aside to retrieve his bow and quiver, still propped neatly in a corner. "Thank you for coming to keep a foolish woman company," she repeats; weapons look bizarre in a noble's grip. "Please be well, and do help yourself to anything you like from the pantries, or from the guest suites. Else my bloody well-wishers will get them, anyway. Oh, I almost forgot – your things…"

Bleary, she picks up the loot sack, packed with her own possessions; its bulk hangs awkwardly between two elfin hands.

"I'll leave them up here for now," he fumbles. The taffer's gaunt, large-eyed face is ashen.

"That's all right. You can always come and pick these up next time you visit our home again." Without a catch, Edwina plops them down. She, too, collapses – replacing herself bonelessly into the waiting cushions. Wood creaks. Glass shudders in the frame. Youth sheds to lay stark the exhaustion and sickness of an old, drifting lover made older than she is. He has no inkling as to how she's still speaking with so much wine fermenting in her blank stomach.

"Sure," managed the moonlighter, wincing a smile, voice hoarse.

Lady Moira's eyes are unable to withstand any more. Fatigued, dry, faded and gratefully drunk, they finally slide shut. She bids farewell through a yawn. "Yes, well. Off you bed with you, then. I hope you are able to rest in this storm." Then, longingly, a handbreadth away: "Perchance I shall, as well."

Garrett waits quietly in the shadow of her chair. He listens through a downpour for the slow wheeze of sleep.

The mansion's lady is motionless within minutes. Sleeves curtain over patterned armrests; fine taupe tendrils sprawl; limbs go loose. There is no tick or cough or enduring jumble of unsober words. Her mouth is increasingly blue. She is like a snow sculpture outside the orphanage hall – silent and frigid. She might have been dead were it not for the rimy vapor of her breath.

The widow's throat is like ice when he touches it. Garrett finds her necklace snarled in a shutter of hair and lace. It's sweat-worn; the rope snaps easily with switchblade to thumb. She does not stir. A solitary key flung into his pocket stamps tonight as a success.

It is nearly done. Before he leaves, he pulls a musty blanket from the armoire, shakes it out, and drops it over Edwina's slouching form.

Before he leaves, she leaves him this: _"Sleep well, Good Thief."_

The rest of his night is a race. Mewling cat in the couple's room, warbling captain's baritone, trap hatch behind an ancestor portrait nailed upon the exhibition hall. _Objective_. There is a rowboat waiting in shady rockbed. There is a citadel anticipating definitive results. Compendium clutched in one hand, Garrett ran from that manor as fast as his legs would carry him – in and out with nothing more.

Fourteen days later – when the widow is dead, her casket barely cooling – the master returns, and he takes everything.

He never made up his mind as whether or not Mistress Moira was truly mad. Garrett cannot say if she honestly did not realize her husband sailed out on a squall to die – but she _did_, with powerful certainty, believe he will watch her forever. It isn't something one questions or doubts about over badly-oaked chardonnay. There are, that tottering sailor's wife knew, binds between what is past and present. The thief is less sure of an afterlife. Walking cadavers, ghosts, apparitions, spirit wisps… all horrors he has witnessed, all still somehow creatures of earth. Let Keepers guard the secrets of mortality. A crook should not guess what waits beyond the mists at that farthest horizon line.

Every one of the corrupt estate's special trinkets he sells for coin. He _keeps_ the widow's key. It gathers dust in a locked carving box – dropped among letters, hilt gems, hieroglyphs, teacher's notes, some glorified storybook he'll never read that presses a leftover piece from the Woman of the Woods between two random pages.

He does not know if slain, steadfast, vengeful Robert Moira yet roams his cold stone manse on the sea.

He does know who haunts him.


End file.
